France

An Adventure History

De: Graham Robb

Narrado por: Tom Lawrence

Beginning with the Roman army's first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending in the era of Emmanuel Macron, France takes listeners on an endlessly entertaining journey through French history. Frequently hilarious, always surprising, Graham Robb's France combines the stylistic versatility of a novelist with the deep understanding of a scholar.

Robb's own adventures and discoveries while living, working, and traveling in France connect this tour through space and time with on-the-ground experience. There are scenes of wars and revolutions from the plains of Provence to the slums and boulevards of Paris. Robb conveys with wit and precision what it felt like to look over the shoulder of a young Louis XIV as he planned the vast garden of Versailles, and the dangerous thrill of having a ringside seat at the French revolution. Some of the protagonists may be familiar, but appear here in a very different light—Caesar, Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonaparte, General Charles de Gaulle.

This extraordinary narrative is the fruit of decades of research and thirty thousand miles on a self-propelled, two-wheeled time machine (a bicycle). Even seasoned Francophiles will wonder if they really know that terra incognita on the edge of Europe that is currently referred to as "France."

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Graham Robb (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A Complex Story

This book’s detailed narratives are history descriptions linked to the author’s visits to sites via bicycle. One learns. Recommend combining audio with reading using Kindle to improve comprehension.

If you like snarky, then you will endure this.

I am okay with the occasional snarky comment, but this just goes on and on, ad infinitum. I also had a hard time keeping track of a present day observation or an anecdote of the 13th century Cathar heretics? The author's focus is not the focus I was looking for and I just had to stop. I tried to skip through the chapters that didn't interest me until I finally just gave up. Maybe it's really awesome at the end...... I will never know.

This is not a history book.

I bought this book hoping for a systematic review of France history. To my disappointment it was a description of the author’s travels in search of some aspects of that history. The narrative is undisciplined, frivolous, confusing and barely informative.

Loved it. Just my kind of history.

My favorite chapter, I admit, was the quirky search for the tree, but I loved it all

France’s history through story and vignette

Wonderful. Robb uses small moments in time and place to tell the larger story of France. Funny, smart and illuminating.

Brilliant storytelling

Superbly layered, lots of quality learning; well balanced look at deep core samples and fair, insightful critique of more recent events; narrator could've done better by the French within.

Wonderful quirky telling. Very erudite and amusing.

Alas, wonderful as the writing is, totally entertaining and idiosyncratic in its views and observations, I nearly lost my mind hearing a very British accent mangle nearly all the French words by placing the accent on the wrong syllable. If you don’t know French it won’t matter but if you do it may prove very irritating. Otherwise I hated it to end.